I’ve said this before – there’s a world of difference between learning the negotiation skills necessary to avoid gender blow-back and crush implicit bias, on the one hand, and simply asking for more like that poor orphan, Oliver Twist.

As you’ll recall, Olvier’s request for one more helping of gruel resulted in one of the great musical shaming songs of all time (you will rue the day somebody named you Ol-i-ver!)

Let’s take a look at the research that leads the usually perceptive Vivia Chen astray.

The Research

Chen draws our attention to research done by Maura Belliveau, a professor of management at Long Island University. She reports that

managers were likely to give men substantially higher raises than their female employees—if they had the opportunity to explain the reason for the shortfall to the women.

No surprise there. We know there’s a wage gap and we know it’s largely based on implicit gender bias. So why the doom and gloom? Chen cites the study’s key findings as follows:

Managers gave male employees 71 percent of available funds but only 29 percent to female employees, “when managers knew that they could explain their pay decisions, citing limited resources.”

But if managers didn’t have the opportunity to explain their decision, both sexes got equal raises.

Managers gave men the same raises, regardless of whether the explanation opportunity exists.

“The difference shows up more if it’s a high-paying profession like law,” Belliveau told Chen. ”It’s not hostile gender bias, but more of a benevolent belief that a woman will value the explanation as to why she’s getting paid less. They could be thinking that the explanation is a substitute for pay.”

The researcher told Chen that women aren’t “suckers for explanations” though she gave no research demonstrating this. And instead of making suggestions for women to get past the “not enough money” rationale, she suggested more implicit bias training for management.

No, no, no, no, no.

How many times do I have to say that people do not give away economic power or authority just because they believe it’s the good, fair or right thing to do? If a manager can save the company money by paying women less, he’s not going to look deep into his soul and say to himself, “but that’s not fair; let’s pay her what we’re paying the guys.”

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